Circling Back Toward the ELCA Redux

Well, it’s all been very exciting. The vote was unanimous; First United will rejoin the ELCA. There was quite a flurry of response to the news. The SF Examiner covered our meeting and published an article and a picture. The Huffington Post did an awesome piece that picked up on the SF Chronicle article from last year, as well as from the Examiner article – and from my blog!

If you’re on Facebook, you probably saw the flood of posts and reposts about First United’s vote to rejoin the ELCA. I wasn’t even the first; Pastor Megan Rohrer had it up there before I got home Sunday night. Then it went out to the ELM and Reconciling Works folks, many of whom commented and also reposted. I found out about the Huffington Post article via a FB post chiding me, “And I had to find out about this on the Huff Post?!” My response was, “I just heard about it from you!” and immediately sent it out to everyone. Phil Siegel’s response (Phil’s our PR guru) to the Huff Post piece was, “This is HUGE!” So we got to be in the middle of a bit of a media frenzy for a little while. It was wonderful to read the support and affirmation coming from all over the country and even a FB ‘friend’ in Australia. I even enjoyed reading the negative comments on the Huffington Post and the American Lutheran Publicity Bureau’s forum (no surprises there).

It’s all good stuff. As Oscar Wilde said, “The only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.” The publicity about our decision to rejoin the ELCA was a timely opportunity to get the word out about us. As one commentator put it, “That SF congregation ha s spunk!”

Yep, we do. And in just two weeks, we’ll be moving to our new location at Turk & Lyon, where we’ll begin to explore a partnership with St. Cyprian’s Episcopal Church. We believe that in doing so we’ll have an even better opportunity to be the church of the 21st century. And we are excited!